Hi folks,

I've been considering running a fantasy genesys game, but the only thing I'm struggling with is the magic system. I'm wondering what peoples' experiences have been with the magic system? I think one of the barriers that I struggle with is the lack of progression other than purchasing additional skill ranks. How has this detail interacted with the games you guys have ran?

My friends and had the same reservations initially. I highly recommend listening to episodes 12 and 13 of the Dice Pool Podcast. They discuss all the ins and outs of the magic system, including difficulties in adapting as a GM and as a player to this system of spell casting that is so radically different from traditional RPG mechanics. They are both great episodes.

In my own personal experience, there are some highly relevant talents that make spellcasting more interesting included in RoT, but the most basic talent to consider is Grit. Every time you cast a spell it costs 2 strain whether you succeed or fail, so each rank of Grit is essentially another spell slot. Finding ways to increase your Strain Threshold is hugely important for a spellcaster. Being able to cast several spells each day and still suffer strain from Threat and attacks will chew through your Strain pretty quickly, so the higher the ST the more powerful the mage.

Magic Implements also matter a whole lot. They can decrease the difficulty for certain kinds of additional effects. The GM can even design new and more powerful, possible "Legendary" magical implements to help increase a spellcaster's potency beyond what's available in the CRB and RoT if the player feels like their character just doesn't have enough oomph.

Lastly, don't discount the importance of skill ranks! To get to 5 ranks costs 70 XP in a career skill. That's going to take a while, and each rank has a big impact on how likely the caster is to succeed, especially if you want to cast bigger and badder spells with multiple effects.

I've yet to run, so the following is supposition:

Progression and accumelation will be tricky for Genesys spellcasters. The biggest reason being that a Genesys spellcaster doesn't appear to actually grow very much in terms of scale of power... which is what I expect from spellcasters thanks to decades of D&D-like fantasy RPGs.

There are several points seperating a starting wizard from a retiring wizard (1-2 points of ability, and 3 points of proficiency). Some several useful talents (such as Grit and Desperate Recovery). As well as several different kinds of Implements (and material permutations of them). So there is room to grow.

However most of these elements serve to make you more efficient and reliable at doing whatever you were already capable of doing, your spell damage may increase somewhat, but the scale doesn't. This is basically the same boat a warrior is in, so at least it's fair... But compared to D&D-like games where high-level magic operates on a planetary scale, even an experienced genesys spellcaster pales.

For example, the best resurection spell available in Genesys is limited to the same encounter (so within a few minutes of 'death'). Meanwhile, the best resurection spell in D&D-like games still works just fine on centuries-dead remains; even after they've been put through a wood-chipper.

On the other hand, compared to D&D-like spellcasters, even an inexperienced genesys spellcaster has a huge potential repertoire during play, and isn't limited to the arbitrary design of a spell someone else wrote. Like attack spells that can only target "creatures", but not for any particular reason.

Regarding enforcing accumelation:

Ability and Skill increases will take care of some of that for you. As the player's pool grows so will will the repertoire of spells they can reliably cast.

You can write talents for 'caster's, but I think there are already quite a few that're useful to them. So any new ones need to help define your caster's niche without being too powerful.

Beyond that, just like a warrior you need to improve their gear to improve them:

Give wizard things they need to accumelate, and they'll feel more powerful for having done so. The simplest way is to invent magical baubles that are simply magical versions of the "Right Tool For The Job". The 'job' could be anything from the mundane (creating light) to unusual (breaking the magic seal on an ancient tomb)

Harder to balance, but potentially more satisifying would be to write some upper-tier spellcasting equipment. The magic runes from RoT are a pretty good example of really powerful and niche implements. However they could also be as simple as a Magic Staff that adds one more point of damage than normal, or Heavy Robes that give +1 soak (instead of +0). I chose damage and soak as examples because permutations in those values are the easiest to balance out during play and in advesary design.

The magic related talents in Realms of Terrinoth offer an excellent starting point for character growth, but also great inspiration/templates for creating your own talents specific to your setting. Most of the growth of a magic user in this system doesn’t come from rolling more positive dice, but instead doing more without adding additional negative dice.

The implement craftsmanship system is also a good little extra bit of growth a character can have.

For an example a hypothetical character could have the following list of talents and equipment;

Signature Spell (Improved),

Dominion of the Demora,

Chill of Nordros,

A magic tome of Empowered Range

It they do then they are potentially reducing the difficulty of an attack spell by 7! Or perhaps they have a tome to help their barrier spell, and a sceptre for attack, whilst their signature spell is actually Heal. In that case they are reducing the difficulty of three different spells by 2 or 3.

Ultimately the player will want the difficulty of most spells to be 3, more than that and the chance of success will plummet. Characters end up with a selection of less complex spells that are super flexible, then a small number of spells that they are extremely powerful but very narrow in their focus.

Awesome! Thank you three for the responses. I do like having the perspective that the objective is to reduce the difficulty and not entirely to build a bigger dice pool.

How have you folks handled shapeshifting? I think that's been my last barrier. We have a 5th edition druid player who will definitely be interested in shapeshifting.

Shape shifting in its most simple form is just a narrative description of what happens when the player casts Augment on themselves:

Augment + Primal Furry, with 2 ranks in Knowledge (Magic), is perhaps Wolf Form.

Perhaps when they get to rank 4 or 5 Knowledge (Magic) they learn the Bear Form.

Augment + Swift is potentially a Squirrel or Cat, or something similarly fast

Augment + Swift + Haste could be Form of the Deer, or Horse, but it can also be described as a creature who can Hover

Now if they want to get better over time with their forms then they can take Signature Spell. But you can also introduce a new talent or three:

Animal Form:

Tier: 3, Ranked: Yes, Activation: Passive

Effect: When you first purchase this talent, and each additional rank, choose a single animal. If you take on the shape of that animal using the Augment spell then the spell lasts until the end of the encounter instead of your next turn, unless you choose to end the spell.

another talent you may want to add is:

Flight

Tier: 3(or4), Ranked: No, Activation: Passive

Effect: When casting the Augment spell on yourself you may increase the difficulty by 2 to gain the Flight ability (see genesys core rules). May not be used with the additional target effect.

Finally Realms of Terrinoth has a Shapeshifter talent too, but the way it’s designed is more intended to mimic lycanthropy, although it could be modified to be a more at will type of thing.

I agree that for most uses of polymorphing yourself, Augment is the best existing basis. Since it is usually just used to gain some bonus or another.

Augment + Swift and/or Haste makes for a good 'shrink self' or small animal form. Works best if you make appropriate checks, like Deception or Stealth.

Augment + Primal Fury makes for a good 'enlarge self' or large animal form.

Using Augment to grant invisibility or flight is even mentioned in the GCRB on page 212 (suggested as a Hard (three difficulty) Check). So I don't see why Augment couldn't also change size, or grant other animalistic abilities (such as waterbreathing or nightvision). Table III.2-6 is just a set of examples, not the totality of your options. For example Augment + Sanctuary (from the Barrier Table) from 'sighted enemies' could represent the effects of being turned invisible during combat.

21 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

Augment + Primal Furry

I'm going to hope this was an intentional typo.

My biggest suggestion with the magic system is to just try it as is before trying to make alterations to it. A lot it's strength comes from player and GM creativity. The effects of each spell are not limited to just what is in the structured encounter tables.

I still haven't played Genesys, (though I'm fairly familiar with the system, I ran campaigns both for Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion), so I don't have actual experience with the Magic system.

From reading the book, I got the impression they didn't want to spend too many pages with a system that wouldn't necessarily be present on most of the settings, so they had to keep it simple and generic, and they found an elegant way of doing so (by making it versatile instead of bringing lists of specific spells).

It seems it works just fine when you run a game that is set in high fantasy setting, where magic is kinda trivial and everyone can use it, such as Terrinoth.

But I don't think that model will work for every setting.

Currently, I'm trying to adapt my own Arkham Files/Cthulhu Mythos setting using GENESYS, where (at least initially) regular Joes and Janes stand up against creatures and such. It doesn't make sense to allow them access to all forms of magic, as, to me, part of the fun is finding musty tomes and learning the spells contained within.

That means I'll have to change the rules a bit, magic won't be a carreer skill for any of the basic carreers, and in order to use a spell one must first learn it (if you learn a spell and don't have any ranks on a magic skill, it's ok, so that restriction won't apply anymore), on the other hand, the spells will have their definite descriptions and effects known to all fans of the boardgames (Flesh Ward, Shrivelling, Astral Travel, and so on) which means I'll have to write a bunch of them...

That also means I don't need to worry about having 3 different magic skills, a single one will do.

17 hours ago, Zsig said:

I still haven't played Genesys, (though I'm fairly familiar with the system, I ran campaigns both for Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion), so I don't have actual experience with the Magic system.

From reading the book, I got the impression they didn't want to spend too many pages with a system that wouldn't necessarily be present on most of the settings, so they had to keep it simple and generic, and they found an elegant way of doing so (by making it versatile instead of bringing lists of specific spells).

It seems it works just fine when you run a game that is set in high fantasy setting, where magic is kinda trivial and everyone can use it, such as Terrinoth.

But I don't think that model will work for every setting.

Currently, I'm trying to adapt my own Arkham Files/Cthulhu Mythos setting using GENESYS, where (at least initially) regular Joes and Janes stand up against creatures and such. It doesn't make sense to allow them access to all forms of magic, as, to me, part of the fun is finding musty tomes and learning the spells contained within.

That means I'll have to change the rules a bit, magic won't be a carreer skill for any of the basic carreers, and in order to use a spell one must first learn it (if you learn a spell and don't have any ranks on a magic skill, it's ok, so that restriction won't apply anymore), on the other hand, the spells will have their definite descriptions and effects known to all fans of the boardgames (Flesh Ward, Shrivelling, Astral Travel, and so on) which means I'll have to write a bunch of them...

That also means I don't need to worry about having 3 different magic skills, a single one will do.

Typically a magic skill is paired with a knowledge skill. Perhaps whatever "Lore" equivalent skill you use could actually limit the difficulty cap of spells you cast in Arkham. So you might have a high aptitude for magic, reflected in multiple ranks of the magic skill itself, but if you haven't studied much (rank 1), you can't even attempt the higher stuff (i.e. anything above a single purple difficulty).

Or, MUCH better still, allow higher difficulties with lower knowledge, but automatically upgrade any dice above the PC's knowledge ranks. That seems pretty consistent with playing with forces you don't fully comprehend, and despairs for casters are particularly harsh.

On 9/25/2018 at 11:55 AM, Dragonshadow said:

Typically a magic skill is paired with a knowledge skill. Perhaps whatever "Lore" equivalent skill you use could actually limit the difficulty cap of spells you cast in Arkham. So you might have a high aptitude for magic, reflected in multiple ranks of the magic skill itself, but if you haven't studied much (rank 1), you can't even attempt the higher stuff (i.e. anything above a single purple difficulty).

Or, MUCH better still, allow higher difficulties with lower knowledge, but automatically upgrade any dice above the PC's knowledge ranks. That seems pretty consistent with playing with forces you don't fully comprehend, and despairs for casters are particularly harsh.

Thanks for the suggestions! There's definitely good ideas to explore there.

Currently, I'm doing something similar to your second suggestion, but I'm not using the knowledge ranks as a parameter for upgrading the difficulty, I'm using something else.

The reason I'm doing it is that in fiction, the more the investigators learn and deal with the Cthulhu Mythos, the more insane they get. So, spells shouldn't get easier with knowledge (cthulhu mythos), I think, but they'll definitely get stronger!